Astronomers blast off mountain top for largest ever telescope

Artist's impression of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The E-ELT will be the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world — the world's biggest eye on the sky. (image from www.eso.org)

The European Southern Observatory has blasted off the top of 3,000 meter high Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile to set up the European Extremely Large Telescope - “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”, according to astronomers.

The blast took place at around 17:30 GMT in the Chilean Andes at
the top of the Cerro Armazones mountain. As a result the mountain
top was reduced by 40 meters to provide a plateau on which the
ESO will build the revolutionary new ground-based telescope.

The EEL-T will have a 39-meter main mirror and will be the
largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world - "the
world’s biggest eye on the sky," said ESO.

“Such a telescope may, eventually, revolutionise our
perception of the Universe, much as Galileo's telescope did, 400
years ago.”

The EEL-T telescope will be four times as large as any other
constructed and 15 times faster creating images 16 times sharper
than even the Hubble Space Telescope.

The telescope is designed on a five-mirror scheme with the
primary mirror consisting of almost 800 segments, each 1.4 meters
wide, but only 50 mm thick. The secondary mirror 4.2 meters in
diameter will be bigger than the primary mirrors of any of the
ESO's telescopes at La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The start of EEL-T construction is planned for late 2014 and it
will launch operations early in the next decade.

ESO claims that one of the most exciting goals of the mission is
the possibility of making a direct measurement of the
acceleration of the Universe's expansion.

Еhe revolutionary device will help astronomers “advance
astrophysical knowledge, allowing detailed studies of subjects
including planets around other stars, the first objects in the
Universe, super-massive black holes, and the nature and
distribution of the dark matter and dark energy which dominate
the Universe.”

In 1998 ESO built their previous telescope – the Very Large
Telescope (VLT) of four eight-meter wide telescopes - with a
similar mountain-top levelling to create a flat surface on which
to build.